Kenya's press takes to the streets against bill

"Mr. President, you gagged us!" said a
banner tied to the gates of Parliament today. Kenya's Editors Guild and the
Kenya Correspondents' Association organized peaceful demonstrations across the
country to protest a media
bill currently under parliamentary review. Protests were held in every county in the
country, according to William Janak, chairman of the correspondents'
association, including roughly 80 to 100 protesters in the port-city of Mombasa,
100 in the central city of Kisumu, and 400 in the capital, Nairobi.

The Kenya Information and Communications
Amendment Bill (KICA) returned to Parliament today with presidential amendments
after an October 31 version
was vetoed by President Uhuru Kenyatta. Given the draconian provisions still
present in the current draft, the Kenyan media fraternity came out in full
force to protest. Even Mediamax, a media house owned by the president, urged
its reporters through an email circular to attend the demonstrations. The
Standard Media Group, home of the independent daily Standard and TV network KTN, provided bus transportation and T-shirts
for its staff to protest. "This is the first step in literally gagging the
media," TV Continental Reporter Pamela Nabeea told me while marching. "If we
don't react now, we will forever be silenced."

Marching down streets normally clogged with
traffic, their mouths taped shut to symbolize censorship, Nairobi protesters
handed over a petition listing the Fourth Estate's concerns
to the president's office and Parliament. Activist and award-winning
photographer Boniface Mwangi questioned why the government wanted to institute
a government media regulator when a self-regulatory body, the Media Council, is
already in place and functioning. "I have seen no complaints over the council,
none whatsoever. We have the Media Council to regulate us and that is enough
because we are responsible, unlike some politicians, who incite people to
engage in war."

Originally passed in record time by
Parliament on October 31, the bill would remove the self-regulating media body
and replace it with a government-controlled ombudsman and introduce hefty fines
and stringent advertising and programming regulations. Hopes of reform under a
presidential veto were quashed last week after Kenyatta made small amendments
to the original draft but ignored the majority of concerns raised by the media,
said David Ohito, deputy director of the Editors' Guild. "Passed the way it is, it will amount to
state control." In the bill's current
form, for instance, a government tribunal can fine journalists $5,500 and
media companies around $230,000 if the tribunal finds them guilty of breaching
a government dictated code of conduct. "When you consider the average salary of
a journalist is $300 per month, you can imagine how such a fine could affect
reporting," he told me.

It would appear the protests and
consultations by the Editors' Guild and Correspondents' Association, among
others, may bear fruit. Later this afternoon, MPs suspended discussion on the bill
to allow them to review a compromise that lawmakers had reached with players in
the media industry, according to news
reports. The House Committee on
Energy, Communication, and Information has been in consultation with media executives
and has agreed to allow the independent Media Council to handle issues of
ethics and leave the government tribunal in charge of such matters as frequency
allocations and other infrastructure matters, Victor Bwire, deputy director of
the Media Council said. If a two-thirds majority attends Parliament tomorrow
and votes for the recommended changes, protesters will be able to remove their
symbolic gags and return to covering the news.

Tom Rhodes is CPJ's East Africa representative, based in Nairobi. Rhodes is a founder of southern Sudan’s first independent newspaper. Follow him on Twitter: @africamedia_CPJ

Comments

'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance' so the old adage reminds us. Media practitioners are the frontline soldiers in the defence of liberty. Support the Kenyan media resist executive encroachment on hard won freedoms in Kenya. Say no to President Uhuru Kenyatta's assault on Kenyan pillars of democracy.